Common App Activities List: 2026–2027 Guide
Master the Common App activities list with the 150-character formula, ordering strategy, and power verbs that make your section stand out. Opens August 1.
By Jorbi TeamOn August 1, the 2026–2027 Common App goes live, and the activities section is the part most rising seniors handle last and write worst. Each of the 10 slots gives you 150 characters for your description (about the length of a text message) to show an admissions officer who you are outside the classroom. Most students fill that space with passive filler like "helped with" and "participated in," then wonder why the section feels flat. This guide gives you the exact formula, verb list, and ordering strategy to use every character well.
What the Common App Activities Form Actually Looks Like
Before you write a single word, know exactly what you're filling out. Here's how each field breaks down for 2026–2027, confirmed by Essay Coach's breakdown of this cycle's changes:
Here is a full field-by-field breakdown of the activities form.
FieldCharacter LimitNotesPosition / Leadership Title50 charactersNow optional for 2026–2027Organization Name100 charactersUse the full nameActivity Description150 charactersLead with impact and numbersNumber of ActivitiesUp to 10Empty slots are fineGrade LevelsCheckboxes (9–12, PG)Check every year you participatedTimingSchool year / break / all year"All year" signals highest commitmentHours per weekNumeric fieldBe honest; readers cross-referenceWeeks per yearNumeric fieldBe honestContinue in collegeYes / NoUse it for your strongest activities
Two changes worth knowing for this cycle. First, the section has been renamed "Activities and Experiences," per the official Common App guidance at commonapp.org. The Position/Leadership field is now optional, so students with family responsibilities or self-directed projects no longer have to invent a title or leave an awkward blank. Category labels also got updated, with "Work (paid)" becoming "Employment or Work (paid)" and "Junior ROTC" becoming "ROTC and Military."
Second, the Additional Information section dropped from 650 words to 300 words this cycle, per Empowerly's breakdown of Common App changes. That overflow space you were counting on has been cut in half. Your 150-character descriptions are doing more heavy lifting than ever.
The 150-Character Formula (and How to Use Every Character)
IvyWise and every other credible source on this converge on the same structure:
Strong Action Verb + Specific Action or Task + Measurable Result or Scope
That's the whole formula. The execution is where students trip up.
Here are the formatting rules that make it work:
- Drop "I" entirely. No first-person pronouns. It saves characters and sounds more authoritative.
- Drop articles. Cut "a," "an," and "the" wherever possible.
- Use semicolons to separate clauses instead of periods.
- Abbreviate strategically: natl, org, dept, VP, pres, & instead of "and."
- Use digits: Write 15 hrs/wk, 200+, and 3x, not "fifteen hours per week."
- Never repeat the org name (it has its own field).
- Never repeat your position title (it has its own field).
- Never mention your hours in the description (those go in the numeric fields).
- Tense: Present tense if the activity is ongoing; past tense if it ended.
Shemmassian Consulting puts it simply: "Every character should convey impact. If a word does not add a number, an outcome, or context, delete it."
Before and After: 6 Activity Types, Rewritten
The fastest way to understand good descriptions is to see weak ones fixed. Here are six examples across the most common activity types.
Varsity Sport
Weak: *"I played on the varsity basketball team for two years and we had a great season."*
Strong: Started 48 games over 2 seasons; averaged 12 pts/game; led team in assists; named All-Conference honorable mention (120 chars)
The weak version wastes the reader's time. The strong version drops "I," adds specific stats, and includes external recognition, all in 120 characters.
Paid Job
Weak: *"Worked part-time as a server during the school year."*
Strong: 15 hrs/wk funding family expenses; promoted to shift lead in 6 months; trained 8 new hires (90 chars)
Hours signal sacrifice. Promotion shows merit. Training others shows leadership, all without a single filler phrase.
Research Project
Weak: *"Worked in a biology lab at a university. I helped with experiments on cancer and learned a lot about science."*
Strong: Performed 50+ PCR assays & cell cultures to investigate gene's role in disease; contributed data to lab's ongoing grant research (128 chars)
This example from Echelon Scholars names a specific technique, quantifies scope, and ties the work to real-world output. The weak version tells us almost nothing.
Community Service
Weak: *"I volunteer at the local food bank sorting and distributing food to families in need."*
Strong: Led 20-volunteer team at food bank; redesigned intake to cut wait times 30%; served 4,000+ families over two years (113 chars)
Leadership, process improvement, scale, longevity. One sentence fragment, five pieces of information.
Family Responsibility
Weak: *"I help take care of my younger siblings and do things around the house while my parents work."*
Strong: Supervise & care for 3 siblings (ages 5–12) while parents work full-time; manage schedules, meals, & homework help (113 chars)
CollegeVine's guide on family responsibilities recommends exactly this approach: specific ages, concrete duties, honest scope. No padding.
Independent / Entrepreneurial Project
Weak: *"Started a coding club for interested students."*
Strong: Founded coding club; grew to 40 members; ran 12 build nights; published 3 student apps; won state hackathon (106 chars)
Every clause adds a new data point: founding, growth, cadence, output, recognition. Five story beats in 106 characters.
The Verbs That Actually Work (and the Ones to Kill)
Your opening verb sets the tone for the entire description. Skip passive phrases like "member of" or "helped with," and lead instead with strong verbs that describe what you actually did.
Here are the verbs worth using, organized by what you're trying to convey:
CategoryStrong VerbsLeadershipLed, Directed, Managed, Chaired, Captained, Coordinated, Spearheaded, Oversaw, SupervisedCreation / FoundingFounded, Launched, Designed, Built, Developed, Established, Pioneered, CreatedGrowth / ImprovementExpanded, Increased, Doubled, Grew, Scaled, Elevated, Raised, GeneratedTeaching / MentorshipTaught, Mentored, Trained, Coached, Tutored, FacilitatedResearch / AnalysisResearched, Analyzed, Investigated, Examined, Evaluated, Published, PresentedCommunity / ServiceOrganized, Mobilized, Served, Advocated, Fundraised, Distributed
And here's what to cut:
Weak PhraseWhy It Fails"Helped with"Signals passive participation, not ownership"Was responsible for"Wastes 20 characters on bureaucratic language"Participated in"Describes attendance, not contribution"Worked on" / "Worked at"Too vague"Member of"The bare minimum"Involved in"Peripheral, not central
One practical note: vary your opening verbs across entries. If five of your ten descriptions start with "Led," admissions officers notice, and the repetition undercuts each individual claim.
How to Order Your Activities List
Common App is explicit: list activities in the order of their importance to you. That instruction is printed right at the top of the section. Admissions officers read top to bottom and give the most scrutiny to entries 1 through 4, so ordering actually matters.
Here's a slot-by-slot framework based on guidance from Sarah Arberson (a former admissions officer with 30 years of experience) and GlobalStudyBoard:
Here is how to assign activities to each slot.
SlotsWhat Goes Here#1Your "spike": the single activity that best represents your deepest investment and impact#2–3Activities that reinforce or complement the spike; your strongest sustained commitments#4–6Breadth activities: paid employment, family responsibilities, second-dimension interests#7–9Supporting context, shorter commitments, additional meaningful activities#10Something personal, specific, or surprising
On that last slot, Arberson has a specific recommendation: "The last activity should be chosen carefully. I encourage listing an activity that may still allow the student to say something poetic, personal, surprising, and/or uplifting in the description." Think of it as a bookend.
Depth and your actual role matter more than prestige when deciding what goes where. A multi-year commitment where you led or built something usually belongs above a one-time activity, even if the one-time activity has a more impressive name.
Four factors to weigh when ranking: hours per week, initiative level (founder beats captain beats member), recognition scope (national beats regional beats school-level), and duration (four years beats one).
One underused feature: you can reorder your list before each submission. Applying to an engineering program? Move your STEM activities up. Applying to a conservatory? Lead with music. Tailor the order to the school.
How to Handle Non-Traditional Activities
Not everyone has ten organized clubs and a varsity sport. Here's how to treat the activities that often get undersold.
Family responsibilities are an official dropdown category, and the 2026–2027 rename to "Activities and Experiences" signals that Common App is serious about including non-traditional involvement. If you spend 20 hours a week managing your household, that belongs on your list with the same weight as any club. Use "Family Responsibilities" as your activity type, use the now-optional position field for something like "Primary Caretaker," and write the description with full specificity: ages, duties, and scope. Admissions offices recognize this as legitimate and meaningful involvement.
Paid jobs deserve the same analytical rigor as any leadership role. Surface any promotion or expanded responsibility and whether you trained others or improved a process. If your income supported your family, that context belongs in the description. Don't apologize for working; frame it the way you'd frame any other achievement.
Independent projects (YouTube channels, apps, Etsy shops, tutoring businesses, community initiatives) are increasingly valued. Treat them with the same specificity you'd bring to a formal organization. Name the project in the Organization Name field, use "Founder" or "Creator" as your position, and quantify everything in the description: downloads, followers, revenue, clients, or events.
Hobbies belong if you've genuinely invested time in them. The Marks Education guide on filling out the activities list makes this point well: depth matters more than formality. A student who has spent three years on competitive chess deserves a slot more than someone who attended two meetings of a school club.
Mistakes That Are Costing Students Characters (and Credibility)
A few patterns come up over and over, drawn from Sarah Arberson's post on activities list mistakes.
Repeating your position title in the description. It already has its own 50-character field. Those 150 characters are for new information only.
Mentioning your hours per week in the description. There are numeric fields for that. Using your description to say "15 hours per week" wastes roughly 17 characters you needed for something else.
Filling all ten slots with weak activities. Seven strong entries beat ten mediocre ones every time. Empty slots signal honesty and self-awareness.
Padding your hours. Admissions officers cross-reference time commitments across your list. If your claimed hours don't add up to a plausible week, that's a credibility problem that follows your entire application.
Using the same opening verb repeatedly. If you've Led, Led, Led, Led, Led across five entries, diversify. It reads like you opened a template and never revised.
Burying your job or caregiving role at the bottom. These activities often represent the most time, the most responsibility, and the most character. They belong in slots 4 through 6, minimum.
Forgetting to check "will continue in college" for your strongest activities. It's a small signal, but it tells admissions officers this commitment goes beyond a resume line.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many activities should I list on the Common App?
You can list up to ten. Most competitive applicants list eight to ten, but quality matters more than quantity. Seven strong, specific entries are better than ten padded ones. Don't add a weak activity just to fill a slot.
Can I include family responsibilities on the Common App activities list?
Yes, and you should. "Family Responsibilities" is an official activity type in the Common App dropdown. Treat it like any other activity: use the position field for something like "Primary Caretaker," log your honest hours per week and weeks per year, and write a specific description with concrete duties.
What is the 150-character limit on Common App activity descriptions?
Each activity description is capped at 150 characters, roughly the length of a short tweet. The formula that fits within that limit: strong action verb + specific task + measurable result. Drop all first-person pronouns, articles, and any information (like hours per week) that has its own dedicated field.
How do I list a part-time job on the Common App activities list?
Select "Employment or Work (paid)" from the activity type dropdown. In the description, lead with your hours if they were significant (for example, 15 hrs/wk), then highlight any promotion, people you trained, or systems you improved. If the income supported your family, include that context. Use the same verb strength you'd bring to any leadership role.
Should I list activities in order of impressiveness or personal importance?
Common App instructs you to list activities "in order of their importance to you," but in practice, the most personally important activities are usually also the ones where you invested the most time and took on the most responsibility. Lead with your deepest, most sustained commitment. As GlobalStudyBoard notes, depth and real role matter more than a prestigious name.
What to Do This Week
The Common App opens August 1. Here's how to use the time between now and then.
Step 1: Brainstorm everything. Open a Google Doc and list every activity, job, responsibility, and project from grades 9 through 12. Include things you might dismiss, like caregiving, part-time work, or an independent hobby you've pursued seriously. Aim for 12 to 15 items before you start cutting.
Step 2: Extract your data points. For each item, write down your specific role, one number that describes your impact or scope, and the biggest thing that changed because of your involvement. Those three answers are the raw material for your 150-character description.
Step 3: Draft and measure. Write each description using the formula: strong action verb + specific action + measurable result. Use a character-counting tool (Google Docs word count works, or a free online counter) so you know exactly where you stand.
Step 4: Order and check. Rank your list using the slot-by-slot framework: your deepest commitment goes first, your bookend moment goes last, and your jobs and family responsibilities belong in the middle. Then run every description through a quick checklist: Does it lead with impact? Does it contain at least one number? Does it open with a strong verb? Is it free of "I"?
When August 1 hits, you want to be editing, not starting from scratch. That's the whole advantage of doing this now.